Tag Archives: Catholic

It’s been a while –– I’ve stopped writing our my homilies and recording them has been a bit challenging, so there hasn’t been much to post. I’ll work on it. In the meantime, I’ve added some other audio files.

Last week I gave a Parish Lenten Mission for Holy Family Parish in St. Albert, Alberta based around the book Divine Renovation and the current need for Parish transformation –– moving toward a missionary dynamic in the Parish. The Mission took place on March 5 & 6 (2018). Below are the two talks.

Last week I had what was perhaps the most difficult funeral I’ve ever had. One of our parishioners, a middle-aged and beloved man, took his own life. We’ll never really understand why he did this, but we trust in God’s mercy and turn to Jesus in prayer and in sorrow. The following is the homily I gave for Shamus’ funeral. May he rest in peace.

Loneliness… Have you ever noticed how lonely people are? And I don’t just mean today; people have always been lonely, though I think it’s more severe in our time than it was before. Have you ever wondered why that is, why people are lonely? If you take time to think about, and are honest about it, you’ll come to see that everyone is lonely. Yes, absolutely everyone is lonely.

The great rock icon Freddie Mercury once said: “You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man. And that is the most bitter type of loneliness, success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds. But it’s prevented me from having the one thing we all need: A loving, ongoing relationship” (Rock On Freddie, 1985).

You see, that’s because loneliness isn’t a disease, it’s at the heart of the human condition. From the very beginning of Creation, man has felt a certain loneliness, a need for an ‘other’. God Himself said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him (Gen 2:18). And so God created the animals. But that didn’t suit the man. Then God created woman, and the two became one flesh.

When God created us in His own image and likeness, He created us for union with an ‘other’. Just as God is in Himself a communion of three Divine Persons, so too, has humanity been created for communion. We’ve been created with the need for others, and not just in a marital way, but with the need for deep personal communion with others; it’s part of our design.

Unfortunately, the great tragedy of original sin broke down communion: it broke communion with God, with others, with Creation, and even with ourselves. And it didn’t just break down communion, but even broke down our ability for communion. The joy and oneness of communion now became a sense of isolation and loneliness.

And yet, we still long for communion, we still need this communion, because it’s what we’ve been created for. Now, however, we just can’t seem to achieve it; the other person always remains ‘other’. This is the great misery of the human person.

Well, it’s into this misery that God entered by becoming a man in Jesus Christ. Jesus entered into this misery, lived it out, and even went into its very depths through His Passion on the Cross. Remember His cry on the Cross? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mt 27:46). Or the Lamentation we sing on Good Friday: Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow (Lam 1:12b) Jesus entered into the abyss of human loneliness — further, I think, than any of us can even imagine —, deep into the darkness of despair. And He did this so that He might be there with us, in the deepest recesses of our loneliness. He did this so that no one could ever say that they’re too far from God to be saved. As Jesus said, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Lk 19:10; cf. Mt 18:11).

Jesus has gone to the ends, not of the world, but of being in order to save His lost sheep. This, my brothers and sisters, if God’s mercy! This is how deeply He loves us and desires for us to be with Him. Because the truth of the matter is that while our ability for communion has been compromised by sin, His has not. While our loved ones will always remain distant and separate from us, Jesus makes Himself one with us! This is why He became man. This is why He died on the Cross. This is why He continues to call us to Himself.

Yes, loneliness is at the heart of the human condition, and it will never be completely gone, but Jesus invites us to a unique personal relationship with Him that transcends our limitations, even in this life. We need not hide our loneliness from Him, but rather we need to bring it to Him, because only He can truly understand it. Part of what keeps us apart from one another in this life is that we can’t ‘get inside’ of one another; we can’t read each other’s minds, each other’s hearts. The other person forever remains a mystery, especially if they put up barriers. As the actor Robin Williams once said, “All it takes is beautiful fake smile to hide an injured soul and they will never notice how broken you really are”. But we can’t hide this from God, because He knows the depths of our hearts, He knows our brokenness better than we do.

But we shouldn’t hide our loneliness from each other either. Instead, we ought to come together before the Lord in our misery, in our deepest longing for communion. Because in doing so we not only find solace in one another, but we find friendship in Christ, friendship through Christ, which leads to communion with one another. And that, my brothers and sisters, is the heart of the Church! Brothers and sisters who come to Jesus, together in their woundedness, together in their loneliness, together in their brokenness to find strength and hope in Him, and companionship with one another.

While we all face loneliness, no one should face it alone — in fact, no one does face it alone, but Jesus is always with us; in the depth of our brokenness, in the depth of our suffering, in the depth of our darkness, He is there, waiting for us, waiting to bring His light and His grace, waiting to bring us together to the Father. May we never forget — no matter how lonely we may feel — that we’re never alone: Jesus is here. Amen.

I remember a conversation I had with my dad years ago, when I was beginning to discern my call to the Priesthood. At the time I was still dating a young lady, and we were talking about the possibility of Marriage, and I asked my dad how I could love God above all else and still love a wife with my whole heart. He answered that in Marriage a husband loves God above all things by loving God through his wife.

This hits to the core of our Gospel message today, as the Lord challenges us to love Him above all else: Whoever loves father or mother [son or daughter] more than me is not worthy of me (Mt 10:37). Jesus isn’t exaggerating to make a point here; rather He’s simply recalling the 1st Commandment and the great “shema Israel”, Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might (Dt 6:4).

Jesus is warning us against making others the first object of our love and attention. He’s warning us not to be attached to His gifts, but to Him. Our parents, our children, our families, these are all gifts from God. They’re indeed great gifts to be treasured, but not treasured more than the Giver Himself. Instead, like my father explained, we’re called to love God through them by recognising that they are in fact treasured gifts given by God. The love we owe to our families, and anyone else for that matter, must be a love that is first and foremost directed to God. To love our families and friends with gratitude to God means that we understand them to be gifts from Him and opportunities to love Him through loving them.

It all comes down to where our hearts, minds and lives are focussed. It’s about not making people or things into idols, but keeping God first in our lives. It’s a question of what we make the priority in our lives.

It’s a beautiful message for us to receive as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of our country, a country that was founded on this very principle. In 1534, when Jacques Cartier first landed on the Canadian mainland, he planted a Cross on the shore. He did this to claim Canada for the King of France, but also as a symbol of claiming it for Christ. He could have easily placed the King’s flag or some other royal symbol, but instead he chose the Cross, claiming this land in way similar to when we greet a child for Baptism and claim him for Christ by the Sign of the Cross. From the very beginnings of colonialisation, what was to become Canada has been dedicated to Jesus by this great symbol of the Cross.

This was echoed in the 1982 Constitution, which begins by stating, “Canada is founded upon the principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law”. And again in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which lists the freedom of conscience and religion as the first freedom of its citizens.

Sadly, today we seem to have forgotten this root of our nation. Instead of being oriented to God, we’ve changed our focus to the self. God is no longer given the supremacy; love of self is now supreme. And I dare say that we’ve made the modern ideas of individualism and self-determination the idols of our day. This is why abortion, sexual immorality, euthanasia, and recreational drug use are being so strongly promoted today. It’s all about the self, all about making the self the focus of our lives. Well, if Jesus says that loving others more than Him makes us unworthy to be His disciples, how much more will we be unworthy of Him if self-love, self-worship, is supreme?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls us to examine the priorities and orientations of our life: are we pointing to Him, or to something else? We need to orient ourselves to Christ, individually and societally. We must again recognise that supremacy belongs to God, and to God alone.

That’s why the Catholic Bishops of Canada have decided to re-consecrate our country to Mary, and are doing so this weekend to coincide with Canada’s anniversary. We need to get back to our Catholic roots, and one of the best ways to do that is to turn to Mary. Just as Mary brought Jesus into this world, so too can she bring us back to Him. By staying close to Mary, our Mother, she can help us to receive Jesus in a deeper way and to follow Him more perfectly.

This is the purpose of Marian consecration. By consecrating ourselves to Mary, we consecrate ourselves to Jesus through her. Just as Mary’s life was set-apart for Jesus, so too, by consecration to her, are our lives set-apart for Jesus in imitation of her. It’s a commitment to follow in her footsteps as the perfect disciple of Jesus, who calls us to Do whatever He tells [us] (Jn 2:5).

With this consecration, we also ask for Mary’s intercession and protection for ourselves and for our country: that she who is destined to crush the serpent’s head will also defeat what St. Paul calls the spirit of this world, so that Christ may reign in our hearts and in our country.

May we, then, express love of our country by renewing our love of Jesus through Mary by calling upon her to pray for us and to lead us into the ways of love, that we may truly love God above all things, with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Like Mary, may it be done to us according to God’s Word (cf. Lk 1:38). Our Lady of Canada, pray for us. Amen.